Putting the secretary back into the secretary of state

Hillary Clinton may not be much of a Secretary of State, but she’s an aggressive, if not always astute, self-publicist. For example, the more obscure her assignments become, the more puff pieces seem to appear lauding her for transforming the Secretary of State position.
Then there’s this piece by Laura Rozen in Politico that called “Clinton ready to be deployed to Middle East if needed.” I’m sure she is. But then, as she used to remind us, she is also ready — “so ready” — to be president.
The real question is whether the White House is ready to give Clinton a role in the Middle East, or anywhere else that matters. Rozen informs us that the Secretary of State has been “burning up the phones on the Middle East, talking to Israeli President Shimon Peres near-daily.” This sounds like the beginning of a joke – “what did one figurehead say to the other?”
Rozen also reports that President Obama has tasked George Mitchell with “pushing forward on negotiations with Israeli and Palestinian representatives” and Clinton with reporting back to Obama by October 15th on the status of Mitchell’s efforts. Thus is our Secretary of State transformed into a recording secretary.